A news item we broadcast on 23 April on television and online reported that a Ukrainian manufacturer was producing dolls of Adolf Hitler. The item also included an interviewee who said that the policies of Ukrainian leaders were contributing to a revival of neo-Nazism in Ukraine.
The pictures came to the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ from a Russian television station via a trusted agency route. When we take material from other broadcasters we scrutinise it under our normal editorial guidelines, but on this occasion it was not subjected to the required rigorous examination. There was a factual error in the report, in that the figurines are actually made in Taiwan. In addition, the interviewee should have been challenged.
After receiving complaints, we investigated the item and immediately decided not to run it again on television and to remove it from the website. We apologised to those people who had told us they were offended by the piece, and of course we're happy to repeat that apology publicly.
25 years ago breakfast television launched on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ One. I'd like to say I remember it well, but the truth is, my mother thought (and still does) that turning the television on first thing in the morning was the work of the devil, so I wasn't allowed to watch. She wasn't alone – no-one knew whether there would be a real and sustainable appetite for an early morning television programme of this sort - and it's been reinvented several times over the last quarter of a century in search of the perfect breakfast formula. From its beginnings as Breakfast Time - a bright, light mixture of features, star signs and cookery slots, through Breakfast News - a more traditional news programme - to where we are today - simply Breakfast.
The programme today pays homage to its predecessors - we aim to bring you the big stories of the day alongside a lighter mix of features and celebrity guests. It can be difficult at times to get the balance right, but we must be on the right lines - up to five million of you watch us every day.
So here's to the next 25 years. I hope we'll carry on bringing you all the news, information and entertainment you need to start your day, and in a way that is as warm and friendly as possible.
One of the biggest changes of the last few years has been in our relationship with you, the audience. With so many ways to get in touch, you can let us know what you like, what you hate and what you want more of, in an instant. I'm looking forward to getting to know you even better in the months and years to come.
It’s a pretty quiet period for news at the moment - fairly normal for August though - and sometimes it can be a bit of a struggle to find enough stories from around the UK.
Earlier this week our interest was sparked by the news that a group of c was setting up camp near Heathrow airport. Two thousand people are expected at the Camp for Climate Action by the weekend and there's the promise of "mass direct action" on Sunday.
It certainly sounds like a story we should be keeping an eye on so we sent a team down there on Monday to take a closer look.
The problem with a story like this is we need to get our team in place just in case something happens, and once they're there we can't leave in case we can't get back in! So, we've now got a satellite truck parked up in a field next to the camp, and will keep it, and the team, there until at least Sunday.
However, so far, not a lot has happened. People are still arriving and although there've been a couple of protests (one at Heathrow and another at Biggin Hill airport) they've been relatively low-key. While our team sit and wait down at the camp, back at base we're trying to make sure that we don't over-report the story just because we've invested in it or just because there's so little else happening in these long, quiet summer days.
Faye Turney reportedly received more than £100,000 from ITV and for the story of her capture and detention in Iran. The response to this, and the (temporary) permission given to her fellow crew members to sell their stories, has been vociferous.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the MoD's decision, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ was just as anxious as every other news organisation to hear first hand what had happened during the crew's thirteen days in captivity. The problem for us is that we don't pay for stories.
We'd been very careful during their time in captivity not to bombard the sailors' families with requests for interviews and to try to respect their privacy - a request which had come from them through the Ministry of Defence. We wrote to all of them asking if they would consider speaking to the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ once their ordeal was over. And, as soon as news of the crew's imminent release was announced on Wednesday last week, many of them did.
As for the crew themselves - of course we were disappointed that a couple of them decided to sell their stories rather than speak to us. Lieutenant Felix Carman, who said 'he wasn't in it for the money' spoke to the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ (watch the interview here) at the weekend. Now that the MoD has changed its mind and banned the others from selling their stories maybe a few more of them will talk to us too.
The story of , the al-Qaeda plotter who planned to kill thousands of people in the UK, has been all over the news this week. Sentencing him to life in prison, the judge said that if his plot had succeeded he could have caused carnage on a "colossal and unprecedented scale".
Our correspondent Daniel Sandford had been across this trial for some time and obviously recognised its significance. So he was more than a little dismayed when the trial judge decided to impose restrictions on the reporting of the case which would have stopped us making any of the details public until over three years after Barot's arrest. (The judge believed that the publicity the case would receive might prejudice the trial of seven other men who are still in custody.)
We begged to differ, and thankfully, so did our lawyers. Just over a week later the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, along with colleagues from the Times and Associated Press, went to the Court of Appeal to try to get the decision overturned. This kind of challenge can be an expensive and risky business but we decided the story was so strong that it was well worth it. We turned out to be right; the judges declared the original ruling unlawful and lifted all reporting restrictions. If they hadn't, one of the major stories of the week would not have been told.
We weren't the only ones who felt this was too important a story for the public not to know about it. As Barot began his life sentence Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism commander told the media: "For well over two years we have been unable to show the British public the reality of the threat they faced from this man. Now they can see for themselves the full horror of his plan".
